Sunday, December 23, 2018

I couldn’t bring myself to dub this piece
a review. Sure, I carried my journal and pen, but I wasn’t there to simply cover
it. Getting to Paul Winter’s solstice event had been a goal for decades, but
somehow always missed. Somehow, and I’ve lived in New York my entire life. This
year was different.

Hurriedly walking east on 112th Street,
still twisted up within from crawling in traffic since Brooklyn, the wife and I
made our way to the Cathedral. I hadn’t gotten a good look at St. John the
Divine since its scaffolding came down a few years back, repairs complete. By
the time we hit Amsterdam Avenue, the grand façade pridefully displayed itself.
A gothic haven, mystic but never beyond reproach.

We took the stairs and entered, trying to
seek out general admission seats not tooooo far back. We were semi-successful (no,
I was not there on assignment and wouldn’t use my press card to snare a closer
view). No matter that, the room itself, with its ceiling of massive heights,
sang to us just as personally as the front rows. As a firmly unreligious sort,
somewhat unspiritual too, settling into this church with the warm welcome of candles
flickering over plain wax, everything made more sense. I carefully scanned the
stone walls, the breathtaking architecture, the large banners proclaiming messages
of (actual) unity and unashamed social justice.

The lights dowsed, and Paul Winter’s
soprano saxophone resonated suddenly across the Cathedral. A thin blue
spotlight directed all eyes to the high, small balcony well behind us; there
stood Winter offering his lyric call. It echoed through the house and every
chest cavity within, clarion. This led to an all-encompassing solo statement by
Jeff Holmes, the Winter Consort’s new pianist, from his perch onstage. Next, the
presence of organist Tim Brumfield became dramatically evident as his deft
touch on the church’s aeolian pipe organ usurped the space and the ground
beneath. By the time
drummer-percussionist Jamey Haddad launched into his own solo segment—thunderous
and whispering all at the same time—Winter had made his way to front and
center, flanked by the Consort on varying levels of lifts. Above Haddad’s lift
was that of cellist Eugene Friesen, long-term Consort member with his own
amazing performance resume. Bassist Eliot Wadopian stood nearby Holmes’
keyboards and the celebrated woodwind master Paul McCandless sat to his left,
armed with English horn, bass clarinet and a history that includes Oregon and the
first Consort before that (it seems strangely unjust that this noted
instrumentalist was not acknowledged by Winter until the close of the evening).

In the darkened space, lit only by the
stage which glowed 2/3 of the long way across from us, and the golden-white sparkle
of candles, taking notes become impossible. Before the 3-hour show’s
intermission, Winter and company were joined by the gifted voice of Theresa Thomason,
who encompassed a soulful blend of Mavis Staples, Aretha Franklin and Mariah
Carey, probably others who don’t come to mind just now. One hears the church in
Thomason as clear as it is in the best of R&B, but that only helped realize
the mission of this particular house of worship, one welcoming every religion,
as they all should. And then without warning, the sound of African drums,
djembe and conga, mostly, craned up from the rear, accompanying and guiding the
Forces of Nature Dance Theatre as the entire troupe glided toward the stage.
The crowd, for the umpteenth time, erupted in a wild applause.

Other highlights included the emergence of
the Solstice Tree, it cast of spiraling metal—the very imagery of the ancient
Spiral Goddess--decorated by multiple gongs and bells. A traditional clog
dancer, depicting a sprite, celebrated it’s being, borne of the oldest
religion. For the first time in a long time, I experienced an utter spiritual welcoming.
This was only made stronger by Matt Guyon’s striking of the giant sun gong, aloft
in the tower. Each stroke of it, a quake.

And during the nightfall epic, the
solstice itself, the longest night of the year, was represented as the crowd faded
into a mystical darkling. Very, very slowly we were coaxed into the imagery of
daybreak, closing with a soaring crescendo over softened waves of melody.

Overall the sheer power of s o u n d was on display throughout the
evening, both as a force of spirituality and as one unto itself. As the lighted
globe made its way to the front and then rose above us all, Paul Winter reveled
in the song of a forlorn wolf, offering responses through his horn which sang
to the ages.

Sunday, December 9, 2018

Shelley Hirsch is a downtown original. The vocalist
was one of the framers, conjuring and creating with the renegades of New York’s
‘70s-‘90s arts underground. Though still centered in NYC, her career has consistently
extended well beyond Houston Street through collaborations with John Zorn,
Butch Morris, Elliot Sharp, Fred Frith, David Moss, Ikue Mori, Jin Hi Kim, Phill
Niblock, David Weinstein and an expansive array of others. A November tour took
her to Portugal and the UK, before heading home for gigs with old friends
Christian Marclay and Anthony Coleman. She’s also preparing for series of
literary projects that are putting a whole new spin on spoken word.

JP: Unlike so many artists who
were drawn to New York City over the last century, Shelley, you’re a native.

SH: Yes, I was born in
Brooklyn. My neighborhood was East New York but when I was 17, I left home and
moved to the Lower East Side. Ludlow Street. This was 1969; rent was $60 per
month. Moving to Manhattan was a big deal but I had traveled there during high
school when I attended the High School of the Arts. I was majoring in Theatre
but dropped out after a year when my teacher told me I had no talent for the
stage.

JP: And you also lived on
the West Coast for a while?

SH: At
18 I moved to San Francisco. I had joined an experimental theatre company not
far from Haight-Ashbury. I moved into a kind of mansion with others in the
company and some film students. It was in a fancy area and the neighbors
started complaining about “hippies”, so we got busted and plans changed. I
moved up to Napa for a while, and then in the Valley, where I’d yodel every
morning into the mountainside. I was already experimenting with extended vocal
techniques and the yodel became another part of that repertoire. The Napa Valley,
with its great expanse, inspired it.

JP: But it was common for
young people to do this in those years, to travel and experience life. And like
other young Americans, this also took you to Europe.

SH: Yes,
I moved to Europe to join a Dutch experimental theatre group, but that never
worked out. I was living in a squatted loft and met some guys who were singing
swing standards and I joined their group. They were actually journalists but
sang very well together. I knew these songs from my parents’ records and I
began to sing with them in a community space where we’d gather. It was a very
political time to be in Europe, lots of activism and very exciting. But I
returned to the East Village in 1972 or ‘73 before settling into TriBeCa. I’ve
had my loft there since 1976.

JP: Downtown was beginning to brim over with a new
kind of creativity by the middle ‘70s. Punk, free improv, new composition,
electronics, minimalism, no wave. So much was happening and there was a mass confluence
of the arts too. How did this affect your development?

SH: There were many things going on. A remarkable
combination of music and art. That time was the best for crossover and so many of
us came from one discipline—visual art, film, theatre--and got into music. There
was a shifting into different worlds, rather fluidly. I was performing with
experimental techniques, using abstract sounds, but then Kirk Nurock, Jay
Clayton and I began performing among other improvising groups. A little later
Jerome Cooper, Steve McCall and I started working together. We played the
Kitchen. I was in awe of (vocalist and guitarist) Arto Lindsay and his work in
DNA. Like him, I wanted to abandon notes and sing utterly raw. But I’m a singer,
untrained, yes, but I’m a singer. I couldn’t go that route. I have always
incorporated spoken word into my music and have had a strong connection to the
other arts too. While modeling at the Parsons School of Design, I got to work
with many visual artists. Galleries and museums always inspired me.

JP: Did you also maintain your theatre career?

SH: I had to audition for ‘Hair’ six times (laughs).
And I was rejected for the lead in ‘Evita’! But theatrical aspects were in my
performances, regardless. I was creating characters and portraying them in the
songs: old ladies in East New York or Blanche DuBois (ie: “Blanche” by Hirsch
and David Weinstein from the 1990 downtown anthology ‘Real Estate’).

JP: In the no wave genre, particularly, it was
standard to trade off with other creatives, moving in and out of the
disciplines. Free jazz artists were hanging out in the punk clubs, poets were
making films…

SH: Lee Ranaldo studied film and came from that world.
Lary Seven too. By day, we’d be working in our lofts and at night go out. We
often saw James Chance and the Contortions perform, but he was also playing
dance clubs with people like Hamiet Bluiett (Chance’s funk band James White
& the Blacks included Joseph Bowie and others who’d form Defunkt). I’d been
performing with the Public Servants, a rock band, very funky with experimental
sounds. Phillip Johnston played soprano and alto saxophones and Dave Sewelson
was on bari. Bill Horvitz, whom we recently lost, was the guitarist. Dave
Hofstra on bass, Steve Moses was the drummer (later, Richard Dworkin). Others
frequently sat in like Wayne Horvitz or John Zorn. We were together from ’79
through ’81, opening for the Slits at Irving Plaza but also playing underground
spaces.

SH: Samm Bennet (electronic drums, percussion) and
David Simons (drums, percussion, prepared guitar, jaw harp, zither) are on
this. We recorded it in 1987. A couple of labels have expressed an interest in
re-releasing this. But my work is now going into the Downtown Archive of the
NYU Fales Library: my recordings, writings, everything.

JP: You have a performance coming up with Anthony
Coleman, another original of that downtown scene.

SH: Yes, at Arete Gallery on December 11. We haven’t
played together in a long time, so I’m really looking forward to this. We have
a long history. Anthony was in Glenn Branca’s group back then and I had a brief
period performing with Branca’s band, Theoretical Girls. At one of those gigs,
we shared the bill with Gong. Anthony and I were also in Zorn projects together
and I had the good fortune to have him in my large-scale works. When this gig
arose, I immediately knew I wanted him there. Anthony loved the idea.

JP: And this month you’re also performing with another
old friend, Christian Marclay?

SH: We’ve been friends since 1984. Our new work is his
conception: Christian doesn’t want to play turntables anymore, so for this UK
gig he’s playing his photo images of onomatopoetics, projecting them onstage;
he now makes his living as a visual artist, you know. I’m improvising voice and
movement and in turn his projections are affected, so this is very interactive.
It’s thrilling to find new ways to use
language and the voice, with movement generating the levels of consciousness:
this then turns into an idea and a word.

JP: That’s quite fascinating. And I understand you’re
also part of Issue Project Room’s end-of-season event?

SH: That’s December 15: improvisations with Marcia
Bassett (electronics). I relish the opportunity to engage in these different
sources. And some time in December will be the release of a new CD I’m looking
forward to, “Peter Stampfel and the Atomic Meta Pagans featuring Shelley
Hirsch”.

JP: But you’ve been busy in creative writing as well. Can
you speak on that?

SH: My literary writing is coming to the forefront
now—I was too shy to seek publication before. It’s all authentic as I try not
to edit in the traditional sense. Words appear and suddenly take on a
significance. Like prosopopoeia: a
rhetorical communicative device.

JP: So, sitting down to write literature is not new to
you?

SH: I’m currently working on a piece with large sheets
of paper covered in my prose, attached to the wall. I read from these and use
movement in performing it. To generate thoughts and stories, I listen to the
minimal, drone music of Eliane Radigue -- she’s about 80 now; I wanted to
collaborate with her, but she refused (laughs)! For stream of consciousness
purposes, I’ll also do some live writing. I have a residency in Queens Lab
where I’m completing the piece. But I’ve always used creative writing to craft
characters for songs. That’s what my 1992 album ‘Oh, Little Town of East New
York’ was all about. The characters were inspired by real people in the years I
grew up there. I’m blessed to hear from as far away as Siberia, Italy, South
America, with listeners telling me how important that record was for them. It
reminded them of their own upbringing, the rooms they lived in. It’s
autobiographical though I co-composed the music with David Weinstein.

JP: Brooklyn is hard to get out of the soul.

SH: Well, I actually moved to Greenpoint fifteen years
ago. I’m very aware of the people who were living there before me. Coming from
a blue-collar background, I’m very cognizant of this. People in gentrified
neighborhoods often can’t afford to buy at the local stores. Suddenly, all the
rules are different. But we need to honor people’s lives, culture, feelings, experiences—they’re
here, stored in all of us. The human body is the greatest recorder of all.

THE SHADOW OF NOON from the short story collection 'NIGHT PEOPLE and Other Tales of Working New York' By John Pietaro As he sa...

CULTURAL WORKINGS

Welcome to THE CULTURAL WORKER, a blog dedicated to arts of the people, from the radical avant garde and free jazz to dissident folk forms, punk and popular arts . The Cultural Worker celebrates revolutionary creativity and features a variety of essays, reviews, fiction, reportage, poetry and musings through the internet pen of this creative writer, journalist, musician and cultural organizer. Scroll straight down and you'll also find an extensive historical Photo Exhibit of cultural workers in action, followed by a series of Radical Arts Links. The features herein will be unabashedly partisan---make no mistake about that. The concept of the cultural worker as a force of fearless creativity, of social change, indeed as an artistic arm of radicalism, has always been left-wing when applied with any degree of honesty at all. No revolutionary act can be truly complete in the absence of art, no progressive campaign can retain its message sans the daring drumbeat of invention, no act of dissent can stand so strong as that which counts the writers, musicians, painters, dancers, actors, photographers, film and performance artists within its ranks. Here's to the history and legacy of cultural work in the throes of the good fight...john pietaro

John Reed and Boardman Robinson, 1913

Edward Hopper

Anti-War Dance

Louis Fraina

Writer and early Communist movement leader was later purged from the CP in a haze of controversy. Currently all traces of him remain disappeared from official Party documents

William Gropper: "Revolutionary Age", July 1919

Organ of the Left-Wing of the SPUSA (roots of the CPUSA), edited by Louis Fraina

The Funeral of JOHN REED

1920--at the Kremlin Wall

'Metropolis'

Fritz Lang's powerful depiction of a futuristic society ruled by a lazy bourgeois totally dependent on the laboring of the workers in the depths of the city

'New Masses', 1928

Amazingly hip artwork by Louis Lozowick

Brecht in Leathers

Somehow encompasses all that was 30s Berlin and 70s New York all at the same time

The chilling art of Fred Ellis

from "The Daily Worker", 1931

Debs, with Max Eastman and Rose Pastor Stokes

The patron saint of the Socialist Party working closely with Communist Party cultural leaders--the arts can climb above the fray

'The Red Songbook'

compiled by members of the Composers Collective of NY, a CPUSA cultural organization

Langston Hughes

Eisler and Brecht

Composer Hanns Eisler and poet Bertolt Brecht, revolutionary artists

'Song of the United Front''

music by Hanns Eisler, lyric by Bertolt Brecht

Sid Hoff, 'The Daily Worker', 1930s

"Thank God he doesn't have to swim with the dirty masses in Coney Island"

Paul Robeson

performing for British strikers, 1930s

Stuart Davis

at work

'The Anvil'

Organ of the John Reed Club, 1934

The Rebel Song Book, 1935

Socialist Party cultural publication compiled by SP poet and journalist Samuel H. Friedman. In these fervant years Friedman almost singlehandedly led the Socialist arts program which included much live perforamnce, literature, lectures, gallery exhibits and even the radio station WEVD, named for Debs, which broadcast radio dramas, music and speeches.

The League of American Writers

1936 statement on the urgency of the Spanish Civil War by this powerfully united group of Left and liberal writers, coalesced through a CP initiaitive. The League was an an outgrowth of the American Writers Congress. As strong as this grouping was, its creation also sounded the death toll for the more radical John Reed Club, which was dissolved by Party leaders this same year.

'Waiting for Lefty', 1935

The Group Theatre's debut production of Odets immortal agit-prop play. Yes, that's a young Elia Kazan out in front shouting 'Strike! Strike!" decades before the crisis of conscience and career which saw him naming names in his second HUAC hearing. But wasn't this a time?

'Proletarin Literature in the United States'

1935, the first serious collection, edited by Granville Hicks and featuring the work of Mike Gold, Isidor Schneider, Joseph North, and other noted writers of the day

Artists Union

American Artists Congress, 1936

depicted by Stuart Davis

The Benny Goodman Quartet, 1937

Goodman's combo was revolutionary in that it was fully integrated in a time of terrible racism--further the Quartet laid down the ground work for all chamber jazz to come. The blurring solos of Lionel Hampton's vibraphone brought that instrument into the forefront as a major voice in jazz; Gene Krupa's drumming in this period also created a major role for percussionists in all aspects of this genre. Not to forget Teddy Wilson's brilliant piano playing and the clarinet of the leader!

Partisan Review editors, 1938

Phillip Rahv and Dwight McDonald and co.

'Native Son'

Richard Wright's groundbreaking novel, 1940

Disney Cartoonists Strike!

1941--the very radical cartoonists' union takes the studio by storm

Josh White, Leadbelly and friends

1940, NYC, BBC radio airshot

Leadbelly

"Bougeois Blues"

Carl Sandburg

He covered the march of Coxey's Army, became an early Socialist Party cultural worker and was still a beloved, celebrated elder of American folk culture!

John Howard Lawson, HUAC Hearing

speaking back to power

Hollywood on trial

The Ten included Herbert Biberman, screenwriter and director Ring Lardner Jr., screenwriter John Howard Lawson, screenwriter Edward Dmytryk, director Adrian Scott, producer and screenwriter Samuel Ornitz, screenwriter Lester Cole, screenwriter Albert Maltz, screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, screenwriter Alvah Bessie, screenwriter Also the great Charlie Chaplin left the U.S to fink work because he was blacklisted. Only 10% of the artists succeeded in rebuilding their careers.

Dalton Trumbo

HUAC hearing

Arthur Miller

HUAC vs the playwright

Paul Robeson, 1949

immediately after the Peekskill Riot

Ralph Ellison

'Invisible Man'

The Weavers

Lillian Hellman

Wonderfully atmospheric shot of the brilliant playwright who stared down HUAC

'Masses and Mainstream'

1953

'High Noon', 1952

Gary Cooper stars in the film by blacklisted writer Carl Foreman, a perfect allegory for the isolative stand of those who opposed HUAC and McCarthy

'Howl' by Allen Ginsberg

The militantly revolutionary Gay poet's groundbreaking work, 1956

Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee

the couple modeled the concept of the artist/activist with their brilliant acting abilities and consistent place on the front lines of the struggles for civil rights and labor unions

Beat Poets

In this 1959 photograph taken in New York City, composer/musician David Amram (top right) is seen with some of the artists, poets and writers who would become the leaders of "The Beat Generation." They include (clockwise from Amram): poet Allen Ginsburg, writer Gregory Corso (back to camera), artist Larry Rivers and author Jack Kerouac. Photo: John Cohen, Courtesy of david amram

En Route to Chicago, '68

Jean Genet, William Burrough, Alan Ginsberg--noted poet-activists who were also loud and proud Gay liberationists

'What's Going On?'

Marvin Gaye

The Last Poets

1968: the interplay of free verse poetry, improvisation and the politicis of race and revolution

'Ohio', 1970

CSNY's song offered chilling, driving commentary on the shootings at Kent State University

War Is Over!(if you want it)

A Christmas message from John and Yoko, Times Square, NYC, 1970

Bob Marley

"Get Up, Stand Up"

Samuel Friedman

The Socialist Party's cultural leader seen here in a 1977 pic with his wife. Friedman was a journalist and activist who, after the dissolution of the SP's arts efforts, became one of the Party's candidates for often on multiple occasion (photo by Steve Rossignol).

Peter Tosh

'Talking Revolution'

Rock Against Racism

here's the album collection which chronicled the 1976 and '78 British concerts established to fight the rising trend of neo-fascist skinhead gangs in the UK

Robert Mapplethorpe

This gifted, militantly Gay photogrpaher set off a firestorm of controversy in opposition to the neo-cons of the Reagan administration and the Edwin Meese "decency" doctrine.

Patti Smith

brazenly outspoken punk poet and activist, late 1970s

'Reds' 1982

Warren Beatty and Diane Keaton as John Reed and Louise Bryant, en route to Petrograd

ROCK AGAINST REAGAN

The Dead Kennedys headed up the bill for this protest concert, Washington DC, 1983

Nuyorican Poets Cafe

'Bedtime for Democracy'

Public Enemy

Karen Finley

The sexually provacative feminist performance artist did constant battle with the neo-cons of the 1980s and '90s and became a poster child for right-wing calls to suspend funding to the NEA

'Mumia 911'

This series of arts-actions occured in multiple spaces throughout NYC and other cities in an attempt to raise both funds and awareness for the cause of Mumia Abu-Jamal, journalist and Black Panther who was framed on a police murder charge in the lates '70s and continues to sit in death row now. For this event, NY's Brecht Forum hosted an all-day marathon on September 11, 1999, the house band of which was led by John Pietaro.

Pete Seeger, Music in the History of Struggle, 1999

with the Ray Korona Band, John Pietaro on percussion. 1199SEIU auditorium, NYC

Ani DiFranco

Fred Ho

The revolutionary saxophonist/composer has successfully forged an avant garde music which bridges improvisation and New Music composition w/ Marxism, Maoism and traditional Chinese folk art.

'Not in Our Name'

Charlie Haden reunites his revolutionary ensemble one more time to speak out against the Bush administration's manipulations of the populace, 2005.

The Brecht Forum

The Brecht Forum/NYC Marxist School came to be a fixture of Left education and culture in the early 1970s lasting through 2014.

Dissident Arts Festival 2016

Dissident Arts 2018

Joe Hill

The Industrial Workers Band

Arturo Giovannitti, around 1912

brilliant IWW poet/organizer who composed epic pieces about his imprisonment and the struggle for a more equitable society

Ralph Chaplin

IWW songwriter and journalist who penned "Solidarity Forever" in 1911

John Reed at his desk

note the Provincetown Playhouse poster!

Robert Minor, 'The Masses'

July 1916

Louise Bryant

Crusading journalist seen here approx 1918

Max Eastman

writer, activist, editor of 'The Masses'

Isadora Duncan

Modern Dance in revolution

Robert Minor

The radical artist and leading CPUSA functionary

Michael Gold

Cultural conscience of 'the Daily Worker', 'New Masses' and acclaimed proletarian novelist seen here addresseing a May Day crowd on the streets of Manhattan, early 1930s.

"Costume Ball--Where All Toilers Meet!"

The Daily Worker, January 14, 1928

VJ Jerome

Communist Party cultural commissar

NYC, 1931: A delegation of the John Reed Club following a trip to Harlan County, VA

John Dos Passos, Theodore Dreiser, Sam Ornitz

'The Crisis'

1933, radical magazine of Black American militancy

Marc Blitzstein

member of the Composers Collective of New York

'Negro Songs of Protest'

Compiled by Lawrence Gellert, illustrations by his brother the great Communist artist Hugo Gellert. The songs were arranged by Ellie Siegmeister of the Composers Collective of NY

'The Workers Song book, Workers Music League, 1934

compiled by the Composers Collective of New York

American Artists' Congress

Signed by AAC Secretary STUART DAVIS

Diego Rivera

Diego Rivera

"Class Struggle"

Diego Rivera's amazing work told the story of the workers' fight against capitalist exploitation --and was created as a commision for Rockefeller Center's main hall. It was not long before John D had the piece destroyed.

'Processional', 1937

modernist drama by John Howard Lawson, a leader of CPUSA cultural activists

The Almanac Singers, 1941

THIS MACHINE KILLS FASCISTS

Woody

Silent speak-back to HUAC

George Orwell

the British writer maintained his democratic socialist views through his great novels

Earl Robinson, ca 1940s

member of the Composers Collective of New York, leader of the American People's Chorus and a musician of the people throughout his career. Among his compositions was "Joe Hill", "The House I Live in", "Ballad for Americans" and "Black and White"

Hanns Eisler, HUAC hearing, 1947

Trumbo and Lawson

Paul Robeson at Peekskill

Flanked by unionist and Communist guards, staring down the fascist mobs at Peekskill NY, 1949

Sinclair Lewis

'It Can't Happen Here'

Dashiell Hammet

closing out the HUAC onslaught

'Salt of the Earth'

Paul Robeson shouts down HUAC

"You are the Un-Americans--and you should be ashamed of yourselves!"

W.E.B. DuBois

Stockholm Peace Conference, 1955

'Rebel Poets of America', 1957 LP

Kenneth Patchen and Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Amiri Baraka

"We Insist!--Freedom Now Suite"

Max Roach with Abbey Lincoln

Lorraine Hansberry

Peter, Paul and Mary

1963 March on Washington

'Spartacus', 1964

The tale of a unified slave revolt was first written by Howard Fast in novel form and then realized for the screen by Dalton Trumbo

Bill Dixon's OCTOBER REVOLUTION IN JAZZ, 1964

John Coltrane

Seen here performing his powerful piece, "Alabama" on German television, 1965. The story of the church bombing which killed four African American girls and injured others was retold in this mournful work.

The Fugs

Radical Greenwich Village poets turn rock-n-rollers of a whole other sort, 1965

Freedom Marching

James Baldwin, Joan Baez, and James Forman (left to right) enter Montgomery, Alabama on the Selma to Montgomery march for voting rights, 1965.

You Can't Jail the Revolution

Shades of Chicago, '68

Sam Rivers

The great jazz musician who helped to found the avant garde loft scene in the 1960s was devoutly outspoken with regard to radical politics and the incorporation of same into his music. He is seen here performing at his own NYC space, Studio Rivbea. From the look of that tom-tom to the left, the drummer is Milford Graves who not only broke new ground into improvisational music but its part in Black liberation and other revolutionary struggles.

Henry Cow, late '60s

British avant rock band also engaged in social statements and celebrated the music of Brecht & Eisler

Charlie Haden's Liberation Music Orchestra

1969: Bassist extraordinaire Haden (right) unites with pianist-arranger Carla Bley (left), trumpeter Don Cherry (kneeling) and a wealth of others to create a radical album of anti-war music. Included in the collection was a powerful reconfiguring of Brecht and Eisler's Song of the United Front

Gil Scott Heron

"The Revolution Will Not Be Televised"

MC 5

Kicking out the jam as well as the walls of conformity

Rally for John Sinclair

this fund- and awareness-raising event was in honor of the noted anti-war activist who'd been arrested on trumped-up drug charges. It featured John and Yoko, Alan Ginsberg, Phil Ochs, Archie Shepp, Commander Cody and a host of others

Art Ensemble of Chicago

Revolutionary composition/improvisation: "a great Black music"

Victor Jara

The great Chilean revolutionary songwriter

TILLIE OLSEN w/MAYA ANGELOU

Writers March Against Apartheid, 1970s

Frederic Rzewski

In 1975 the composer created "THE PEOPLE UNITED WILL NEVER BE DEFEATED", inspired by the struggles of farm workers and militants around the globe

Richard Hell

Nihilistic poet of punk performing with the Voidoids at CBGB

ABC No Rio

activist performance space, NY's Lower East Side

'London Calling'

The Clash

Fela Kuti

Revolution in song from Nigeria

'Bonzo Goes to Bitburg', 1985

The Ramones satiric commentary on Reagan's visit to the Nazi soldiers cemetary

'Witnesses: Against Our Vanishing'

Artist Space, NYC, 1989: reactionaries tried at all costs to shut down this boldly outspoken exhibit on AIDS

Day Without Art

Visual AIDS and other arts activist organizations created a Day Without Art to commemorate World AIDS Day

Tupac Shakur

Militant Hip Hop 101

'Somebody Blew Up America'

Amiri Baraka, fearlessly taking on the controversial causes of the 9/11 attacks

Robeson

After falling victim to a nation which tried to disappear him, Paul Robeson is honored with his own stamp

The first Dissident Fest: The Dissident Folk Festival 2006

This event featured Malachy McCourt, Pete Seeger, Bev Grant, Lack and a bevy of radical jazz musicians, poets and more